My 20 Favorite Billboard Hot 100 No. 1s of the 1960s

I revisit the best hits from one of the most important decades in music history.

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The Billboard Hot 100 launched in August 1958 as an attempt to settle a debate: Which songs were actually connecting with American audiences?

That meant canvassing reported sales from record stores, jukebox plays, and radio airtime and combining them into a single definitive ranking of the most popular music in America. On August 4, the company crowned its first-ever No. 1, “Poor Little Fool” by Ricky Nelson.

Many decades and changes to the media landscape later, the Hot 100 is still going strong. As of the week ending May 30, 2026, the chart has had 1,192 No. 1 entries, many of which have become some of the most recognizable songs in pop history. In this edition of my Summer of Billboard series, I’m covering the Hot 100’s first full decade, the 1960s.

Though perhaps best known for the British Invasion and Motown, this list covers much more ground than that. It’s my personal Top 20 from that decade, not the 20 “objectively most important” songs that topped the Hot 100 between 1960 and 1969. I’m sure some of these will be seen as consensus picks, and a few of them I’ve already covered in this newsletter.

That said, I did my best not to turn this and other lists in this series into a tired cliche. We’ll see if that holds. My only rule, aside from the requirement that all the songs had to be No. 1s, was that I limit myself to one song per artist. So you’ll only see one entry from the Beatles, the Supremes, and so on.

If you’re a paid subscriber and want access to the companion playlist of my 100 favorite recordings from the 1960s (irrespective of chart position), keep scrolling or click the next button. If you’re not a paid subscriber, it’s an excellent moment to consider an upgrade if you can.

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In chronological order, let’s begin:

1. “Save the Last Dance for Me” by The Drifters (1960)

According to Doc Pomus, “Save the Last Dance for Me” was almost forgotten before it ever had a chance to be something. Atlantic originally told him and Mort Shuman, his songwriting partner, that the track was first relegated to a B-side. It wasn’t until Dick Clark got a hold of the single that he turned it over and quickly realized that this R&B classic was, in fact, the better of the two songs.

The story behind the lyrics is a bit of a sad one. Lou Reed, who worked with Pomus on other material, told the story that the scribe supposedly came up with the words while watching his wife dance with other men at his own wedding reception. Pomus had polio as a child and was either wheelchair-bound or on crutches for much of his life. That he turned such specific personal grief into one of the most emotionally charged pop singles of the decade is quite a feat on its own.

And then there’s the actual music, which is lush and warm and deftly orchestrated, like a lot of Atlantic records from that period. Featuring Ben E. King on vocals, “Save the Last Dance for Me” held the No. 1 spot on the Hot 100 for three weeks in October 1960. It also topped the R&B chart simultaneously.

2. “Georgia on My Mind” by Ray Charles (1960)

Ray Charles’ recording of the Hoagy Carmichael-Stuart Gorrell standard is, without a doubt, one of the most beautiful songs I’ve ever heard.

The way those strings, aching with so much longing and nostalgia, float in to immediately set the tone is unforgettable, as is when the lower end of the arrangement comes in a half-second before his voice does. As he did with much of his greatest hits, Charles brought in a distinctive blend of gospel and blues, turning a wistful slice of Tin Pan Alley into something that comes across as far more confessional. His vocal take is not only his best, but one of the most moving ever committed to tape.

“Georgia on My Mind” hit No. 1 on the Hot 100 in November 1960 and won Charles two Grammys the following year, including Best Male Vocal Performance. In 1979, the Georgia state legislature voted to make it the official state song, and Charles performed it at the state capitol for the occasion. That full-circle, boundary-smashing moment tells you something about how thoroughly it replaced every other version in public memory. Is there a truer mark of genius?

3. “Will You Love Me Tomorrow” by The Shirelles (1961)

Beginning with this song, this list will reveal one of my soft spots as a music nerd: 1960s girl groups.

From the harmonies to the slyly subversive lyrics to the outfits showcased on various television appearances throughout their rise to prominence, there’s something about them that I will always adore. Before I move into the thick of the Motown ascendence, it’s important to acknowledge one of the subgenre’s first success stories, the Shirelles, through their No. 1 hit, “Will You Love Me Tomorrow.”

Written by Carole King and Gerry Goffin and initially conceived of as a country number, it was a trailblazing first, becoming the first recording by a Black female group to reach No. 1 on the Hot 100. The song asked, in language polite enough for Top 40 radio and specific enough to make several stations ban it anyway, whether the desire a girl feels tonight will be answered with respect in the morning.

The approach was more direct than mainstream pop permitted for women at that time, and Luther Dixon’s detailed production gave their words a vulnerability that felt elegant rather than exposed or used. It set the template for the Brill Building ballad for years to come.

4. “Blue Velvet” by Bobby Vinton (1963)

Let’s put aside the irony and icy remove of this song’s legacy in the titular David Lynch film for a moment and take it at face value.

The sweetness of Bobby Vinton’s “Blue Velvet” is totally disarming. It’s an airy, innocent tale of love, written in 1950 by Bernie Wayne after he’d caught multiple glimpses of a woman at a party clad in a dress made of the eponymous material. The song had previously been a success for Tony Bennett as well, who’d scored a Top 20 hit out of it in 1951. But Vinton’s released, which topped the Hot 100 for three weeks in September 1963, has become the de facto version of this standard.

That was the song’s first life, anyway. Its second one came more than two decades later, Lynch used it as the title and musical centerpiece of the aforementioned 1986 cult classic. The director understood that the song’s sugary surface masked something darker underneath, a nostalgia so perfect it turns unreal, perfectly concealing the rot by being more beautiful than anything you’d expect to find in its vicinity. The record definitely has it both ways.

5. “She Loves You” by The Beatles (1963)

Okay, the Beatles song.

Not necessarily the one that gets cited as the most “important” Beatles song of that era, but undeniably their most commercially successful, especially in the UK. “She Loves You” set multiple sales records after it was released, eventually becoming the Fab Four’s best-selling single in their home country, as well as the top-selling record in Britain in the 1960s. In the US, it was one of the songs that helped the band hold down all Top 5 spots on the Hot 100 the week of April 4, 1964.

All that pomp and circumstance aside, it’s a simple, pretty, energetic pop song. According to McCartney, the song’s conceit elaborated on the call-and-response structure of Bobby Rydell’s “Forget Him.” The “yeah yeah yeah” rejoinder is what makes his and Lennon’s spin on it work, serving as this delightful outburst of affirmation that has gone down as one of the most memorable pop or rock hooks of all time.

“She Loves You” captures the pre-Rubber Soul Beatles at their most compressed and euphoric, a band that understood Beatlemania was exploding around them, one detonating chorus after another.

6. “I Get Around” by The Beach Boys (1964)

The fact that the Beach Boys hit the top of the Hot 100 chart for the first time on July 4, 1964, carries a whole lot of extra meaning if you’re paying attention to the timeline.

Prior to that date, the British Invasion had irreversibly reshaped American radio with the kind of pop music no one had heard before. Fairly or not, “I Get Around” was seen as a homegrown counterpoint to the Beatles and their cultural movement brethren, complete with vocal harmonies so dense they still make the air feel thicker around you, and a falsetto lift in the chorus that has become a sonic hallmark all its own.

Brian Wilson and Mike Love wrote it against the backdrop of their group’s newfound fame and, as so often happens when you find success in the music business, increasing competition. Wilson’s arranging instincts, though not quite at Pet Sounds levels just yet, were already operating at a level that separated him from his peers. Even in a breezy song like this, which is about cars and weekend plans, you can already hear the studio thinking that would eventually produce game-changing pop a few years later.

7. “Oh, Pretty Woman” by Roy Orbison (1964)

What 1960s Hot 100 reminiscence would be complete without Roy Orbison?

Even though I’m on record as having a soft spot for late-period Orbison, “Oh, Pretty Woman” is arguably (and by that I mean probably) his best, most enduring pop single. Interestingly (and I wasn’t aware of this fact before researching this Billboard series), this song was only his second Hot 100 No. 1, the other being “Running Scared,” and ultimately his last chart-topper in the US. A couple of his other greatest hits, “Crying” and “Only the Lonely (Know How I Feel),” stalled out at No. 2.

That world-famous opening guitar figure came from session player Billy Sanford, who stumbled into one of the most recognized riffs of the decade. Orbison heard it, knew what it was immediately, and built a song around it. The title came from a conversation with his wife Claudette, who was heading out and, after Orbison asked if she needed any cash, co-writer Bill Dees interjected that “a pretty woman never needs any money.“

The record held No. 1 for three weeks starting in September 1964 and eventually sold an incredible 7 million copies, making it the commercial apex of Orbison’s career.

8. “The Game of Love” by Wayne Fontana and the Mindbenders (1965)

In a notable reversal of what the chart trends were during the first half of the 1960s, Wayne Fontana & the Mindbenders’ “The Game of Love” failed to reach No. 1 in Britain (it stalled at No. 2) but got over that hump and ascended to the top of the Hot 100 in early 1965.

Prior to the single’s release, Wayne Fontana and his band were barely a household name outside England. But, buoyed by lyrics from Clint Ballard Jr., who’d go on to write another chart-topping hit that will be covered later in this series, the group suddenly had a surefire smash on their hands. At a time when pop artists were crafting songs with an increasing social conscience, this track is a bright, breezy balm. It’s a short burst of upbeat, maybe slightly smug, beat pop.

Wayne Fontana and the Mindbenders burned bright for a short period, but never really recaptured the level of fame they achieved with “The Game of Love.” The group sans Fontana would get close the following year, when their cover of “A Groovy Kind of Love” would peak at No. 2. Fontana’s biggest solo single, “Pamela, Pamela,” didn’t make a significant dent stateside, and he would later be beset with legal and financial issues. He died in 2020 at age 74.

9. “These Boots Are Made for Walkin’” by Nancy Sinatra (1966)

Written by Lee Hazelwood (initially for himself, which, considering the lyrics, is a bullet he was wise to dodge), “These Boots Are Made for Walkin’” is one of those songs that will live forever. I say that because, more than the performances and compositions, which are all top-notch, it’s a pop song that legitimately stands for something.

In my original review of the song for my Fun Song Friday series, I wrote:

“‘Boots’ has evolved into one of the most recognizable feminist anthems from the 60s. It’s a genuinely empowering song compared to almost-there chart-toppers who trafficked in the same subject matter like the Supremes’ “Stop! In the Name of Love.” In that essay, I wrote about how that song’s myopic portrait of a scorned woman “[stops] just shy of delivering ultimatums concerning bad behavior.” If Diana Ross and company knocked softly on feminism’s door, Nancy Sinatra kicked the whole thing in with relish.”

These days, the track is widely accepted as shorthand for 1960s female swagger, a big part of why it’s been sampled, covered, and interpolated so many times in the decades since. Leave it to Nancy Sinatra to take a man’s lyric about revenge and turn it into something women have been righteously claiming and reclaiming ever since.

10. “Strangers in the Night” by Frank Sinatra (1966)

For someone of Sinatra’s cultural stature, it’s difficult to believe that this song is his only solo single to hit No. 1 on the Hot 100. The only other time he got to the top of this US singles chart was with “Somethin’ Stupid,” his duet with eldest daughter Nancy, which stayed in the top spot for four weeks in 1967. If I have one shot to carve out space for Sinatra on this list, this track is an apt gateway, epitomizing the kind of dreamy, forlorn ballad that no one could pull off like Ol’ Blue Eyes.

The melody, composed by German orchestra leader Bert Kaempfert, was originally part of the soundtrack for the James Garner film A Man Could Get Killed. You can hear it multiple times in the score, including during the end credits. Does that make Sinatra the godfather of modern-day sampling, predating a lot of the Blaxploitation soundtracks that hip-hop producers would riff on years later? The parallels go deeper than that, by the way. Years later, there was a rights battle over the song’s authorship that was tied to a larger crime ring.

Whatever you call it, the melody was given English lyrics by Charles Singleton and Eddie Snyder, the record was cut in about an hour, and Sinatra’s comeback was in full swing shortly thereafter. Despite Sinatra openly disliking this song and mocking it onstage during live shows, it became his most enduring late-career success story. The eponymous album would eventually become a Platinum seller, and the song itself won Sinatra Grammys for Record of the Year and Best Male Pop Vocal Performance in 1967.

He’d continue to release quality material (That’s Life in 1966, My Way in 1969, and the slept-on Watertown in 1970), but, chart-wise, this one’s still his crowning achievement.

11. “Reach Out I’ll Be There” by Four Tops (1966)

Of all the songwriting teams who have dominated the Hot 100 during its existence, few have been as prolific or influential as Lamont Dozier and brothers Brian and Eddie Holland, better known as Holland-Dozier-Holland (HDH). In 1966 alone, the Motown legends wrote crossover hits for acts like the Isley Brothers, Kim Weston, the Supremes, Marvin Gaye, and the Four Tops. To peruse their songwriting credits is to steep your brain in pop and R&B excellence.

But, in the here and now, let’s focus on this Four Tops No. 1, which, according to Dozier, was influenced by Bob Dylan of all people. He and Eddie Holland wanted the lyrics to have an in-your-face quality to them, and they encouraged Four Tops lead vocalist Levi Stubbs to “shout-sing” his contributions as a sort of ode to Dylan. The result is an infectious, pretty bracing pop&B hybrid that has more than a wisp of rock in its DNA. The urgency in his voice and the session playing is palpable, which is really what elevates the track into pop’s forever pantheon.

The song hit No. 1, their second after “I Can’t Help Myself (Sugar Pie, Honey Bunch),” on the Hot 100. It also topped the US R&B chart and the UK singles chart in the last months of 1966. The Four Tops have a ton of legitimately great songs in their catalog and are worthy of their own deep dive in this newsletter one day. I recommend you (re)visit their greatest hits on your preferred physical media or streaming platform. If you’re looking for some great HDH stories, check out this podcast the brothers did with Nile Rodgers in 2024.

12. “You Keep Me Hangin’ On” by The Supremes (1966)

Let’s stay in the HDH for another list entry and use it as a gateway to discuss my favorite Motown group of all time, the Supremes.

Their run of commercial success of 12 Hot 100 No. 1s, beginning in 1964 with “Where Did Our Love Go” and “Baby Love,” has rarely been matched by the legions of imitators who count Diana Ross, Mary Wilson, and the rest of the rotating cast of performers as chief influences. They even got a smash-hit Broadway musical and film adaptation modeled on their backstory. The harmonies, the sultry style—it’s all still so perfect. They were easily the most challenging act to pare down the options to a single list entry for this post, but, in my heart of hearts, their most memorable song will always be “You Keep Me Hangin’ On.”

It starts with the choppy guitar figure you hear in the opening few seconds, a riff that drives the rest of the record. It’s like a desperate Morse code dispatch, signaling all is not well in the central relationship described in the lyrics. By building the entire arrangement around that staccato pattern, this track is one of the most rhythmically aggressive singles the Supremes ever released. The density of the multitracked guitars sounds amazing on a high-end hi-fi system, and that weary Diana Ross vocal introduces a note of anxiety that takes it to another level.

“You Keep Me Hangin’ On” was an important bridge point in the Motown discography, connecting the clean-cut soul of those earlier hits to the harder-edged funk that would define the label’s early 1970s output.

13. “Light My Fire” by The Doors (1967)

Founded in 1965 in Venice, California, the Doors are one of the more divisive names from the 1960s classic rock hit parade. They had a short-lived peak, lasting from 1966 through 1970, and had a tumultuous go of it in the studio. A major reason was “tortured genius” poster child Jim Morrison, a talented poet and raging alcoholic, who became better known for his off-stage antics than his contributions to the group’s musical output. Your mileage will vary on whether or not you think he’s still alive or not.

Contrary to what some outlets report, Jim Morrison didn’t write a significant portion of “Light My Fire.” Guitarist Robby Krieger wrote most of it, which might be why it’s one of the odder anomalies in the band’s repertoire, not to mention Hot 100 history. It’s long, at over seven minutes, and kind of baroque-sounding, with this winding, trippy organ solo in the middle. Initially, Elektra edited it for radio, cutting most of the extended instrumental passages, but the version you hear in most places now is the album cut. The disconnect between what the lyrics describe (lustful desire) and how they describe it (with funerary language like “pyre”) adds to the head-scratcher nature of its construction. It shouldn’t work, and yet somehow it does.

You could say the same for a lot of the Doors’ best-known work (see “People Are Strange,” “Alabama Song (Whiskey Bar),” and the LOL-inducing irony of Jim Morrison singing “Touch Me”). If you wound the clocks back and did the 60s over again, I’m not positive they hit as universal a nerve as they did. They weren’t really cut out for, or, depending on who you ask, desiring of, pop superstardom. The Ed Sullivan Show incident, where Morrison supposedly agreed to change the line, “Girl, we couldn’t get much higher,” before a broadcast performance of “Light My Fire,” only to renege at the last moment, should tell you all you need to know.

14. “Ode to Billie Joe” by Bobbie Gentry (1967)

“Ode to Billie Joe” is one of the greatest rope-a-dopes in pop music history.

The song starts out so unassuming and wistful, describing a Mississippi like any other, with cutting cotton and baling hay. Straight out of a Norman Rockwell painting. Then, out of nowhere, the narrator’s mother tells the family, matter-of-factly, that Billie Joe McAllister jumped off the Tallahatchie Bridge earlier that morning. The family keeps eating. The conversation nonchalantly shifts to the crops and other topics, all from the same flattened domestic point of view. The father, immediately after admonishing Billie Joe for not having “a lick of sense,” asks for biscuits.

That is how the song withholds what the listener most wants to know: who Billie Joe was to the narrator and what it means that he is gone. But the lyrics never give you that closure. Gentry, who, as of this writing, is still with us at age 83, has kept her silence for nearly 60 years. She also arranged the strings herself, an addition that was unusual at the time it was recorded but helps give the instrumental this deep sense of foreboding. It’s the most elegant of chillers, which is arguably why it spent four weeks at No. 1 on the Hot 100 in August and September 1967 in the first place.

“Ode to Billie Joe” ultimately finished third on Billboard’s year-end chart and won two Grammys the following year, for Best New Artist and Best Female Pop Vocal Performance.

15. “Respect” by Aretha Franklin (1967)

When I discussed this Aretha Franklin classic in my deep dive into her studio discography, I called it “a soul classic so beloved and ubiquitous that most people either don’t know or don’t acknowledge it as an Otis Redding cover.” Redding’s original version dates back to 1965, framed as a demand from a working man to his wife. He’s out there, grinding away, making sure ends meet, so show some appreciation when he gets home. It’s an assertion of domestic authority through a funk groove. Aretha’s take is something completely different.

Along with her sisters and producer Jerry Wexler, she reworked the arrangement and rebuilt the song’s emotional logic from the ground up. The instantly familiar “sock it to me” call-and-response gave the bridge much more insistence, and in her most decisive move, Franklin spelled out the title: R-E-S-P-E-C-T. That minor addition shifted the entire energy and focal point of the song. Where Redding had been asking a woman for deference, Franklin was demanding what she deserved.

The record topped both the Hot 100 and the R&B chart in 1967. It also won her two Grammys and global recognition as an activist voice that wouldn’t be silenced. Others who wanted to stand up for their needs and values followed suit, with the song being co-opted by civil rights leaders and feminist organizations alike. It’s the rarest of pop standards that has become an anthem for whichever marginalized group needs its support.

16. “(Sittin’ On) The Dock of the Bay” by Otis Redding (1968)

Otis Redding’s most famous song, the one that will still be covered and used as a needle drop in film and TV mini-series, was recorded just days before he passed away in December 1967, in the plane crash that claimed the lives of six other men besides his own. Redding was 26 when he died. In the months prior, he’d scribbled lyrics and ideas for the song down on napkins and hotel stationery. His co-writer on the track, Steve Cropper, [elaborated](”Guitarist, songwriter and producer Steve Cropper”) to NPR in 1990:

“[The] story that I got, he was renting a boathouse, or stayed at a boathouse or something, and that’s where he got the idea of the ships coming in the bay there. And that’s about all he had: “I watch the ships come in, and I watch them roll away again.” I just took that ... and I finished the lyrics. If you listen to the songs I collaborated on with Otis, most of the lyrics are about him […] “Dock of the Bay” was exactly that: ‘I left my home in Georgia, headed for the Frisco Bay’ was all about him going out to San Francisco to perform.”

Stax released the record posthumously in January 1968, and it became the first posthumous No. 1 single in the history of the Billboard Hot 100, holding the position for four weeks. Heavily inspired by the Beatles, the single points toward the superstar Redding was becoming. Sadly, we never got to see or hear what would’ve been.

17. “Everyday People” by Sly and the Family Stone (1969)

The most impressive part of “Everyday People” by Sly & the Family Stone is that it’s a protest song that doesn’t rankle the listener by turning up the volume (vocally, that is) from some sort of unseen pulpit. There’s no screaming, no fire-breathing manifesto. Instead, even though it arrived in late 1968, during one of the most turbulent sociopolitical stretches in American history, it chooses to speak its mind simply and plainly, and it’s a much better song as a result.

Sly and his group walked the walk, too. They were a racially and gender-integrated band at a time when that was a rarity, and they shrugged it off as something so commonplace that you needn’t mind. As the song tells us, “different strokes for different folks.” On an album, the exceptional Stand, that features a track titled “Don’t Call Me N*****, Whitey,” the rougher edges are sanded down here, painting a picture of a better world where we’re all a little bit nicer to one another.

It’s one of the most sampled records in funk and R&B history, and its influence has been spreading across decades, subgenres, and cultural movements for more than half a century. “I am no better, and neither are you,” Sly says at one point. “We are the same, whatever we do.” Amen to that.

18. “Aquarius / Let the Sunshine In” by The Fifth Dimension (1969)

I’ve never seen an iteration of the musical Hair, nor do I have a firm grasp on just how large its shadow looms over 1960s counterculture, but I’m told it’s a very, very big deal. I do, however, know that the Fifth Dimension, one of the decade’s most fascinating soul-rock hybrids, who are rightfully being reappraised following the Summer of Soul documentary, took a couple of the musical’s songs, cut a medley, and eventually spent six weeks at No. 1 on the Hot 100.

What I’ve always loved about this record is how tight, warm, and totally disarming it is. You’re thrust right into this cosmic mysticism, with the pulsing bass and drums underscoring the spiritual importance of the Age of Aquarius. When I first heard it as a kid (and I’m an Aquarius, key part of the story), I had no idea why they kept talking about Jupiter aligning with Mars and all that. As an adult, I recognize the thesis, “peace will guide the planets, and love will steer the stars.” That must’ve been a t-shirt slogan at one point.

“Aquarius” has become one of the most emblematic hits of the Hippie generation, winning the group their second Grammy in 1970 and nearly becoming the biggest song in the US in 1969 (the Archies’ “Sugar, Sugar” nabbed that honor). It’s also a good example of a trend I noticed when putting this list together—how quickly mainstream pop grafted onto material from subcultures in order to sell records. I wonder if that’s still going on …

19. “Honky Tonk Women” by The Rolling Stones (1969)

The Rolling Stones are the proud owners of eight Billboard Hot 100 No. 1 records, including well-known hits like “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction,” “Paint It Black,” and “Brown Sugar.” Even though I like most of their chart-toppers, I must respect the one-song rule and defer to what I think is sneakily the catchiest single they released in the 1960s, “Honky Tonk Woman.” Is it their best, most polished work? Probably not, but you’re unlikely to find a better time in their catalog from that period in the band’s history.

Mick Jagger and Keith Richards wrote this song while on holiday in rural Brazil of all places, first conceptualizing it as a straight country number called “Country Honk.” They recorded a demo of that version, and it’s supposedly the last sessions that Brian Jones participated in before his death. There are conflicting stories as to whether producer Jimmy Miller, who played the cowbell intro, or recent addition Mick Taylor, who influenced the final direction of the song we all know and love, but by the time it arrived as a non-album single in July 1969, it sounded like nothing the Stones had previously released.

“Honky Tonk Woman” reached No. 1 in both the US and the UK, spending four and five weeks at the top of each chart, respectively. It also served as a capstone to a chaotic, tragic year for the band. The single came out the same week as the Stones’ free concert at Hyde Park, which they put on two days after Jones died, and right as the band was completing my favorite album of theirs, Let It Bleed. An end of an era, if you will.

20. “Suspicious Minds” by Elvis Presley (1969)

Fittingly, we close this discussion of my favorite No. 1s from the 1960s with a nod to the King of Rock and Roll.

“Suspicious Minds” was written by Mark James, who made his bones as a staff songwriter for Memphis producer Chip Moman’s publishing company. He wrote hits including “Hooked on a Feeling,” which was first recorded by BJ Thomas, “The Eyes of a New York Woman,” and, after his collaboration with Elvis Presley, “Always On My Mind,” which has been covered by dozens of high-profile artists over the years. He won a Grammy for the latter thanks to Willie Nelson’s version.

James actually tracked a version of “Suspicious Minds” himself, which went nowhere commercially. Then Elvis cut it at American Sound Studio with Moman producing in January 1969, slowing the tempo and leaning into the emotional arc with so much zeal that the final performance is one of the most operatic Elvis ever committed to tape. The King’s version hit No. 1 on November 1, 1969, and was the last time he’d ever reach the top of the Hot 100. Buoyed by the success of the 1968 Comeback Special, it also functions as an unofficial epilogue for the decade’s entire arc. The doe-eyed naivety was gone, both from his career and from the American consciousness.

The decade ended with him sounding more human than he ever had before, and I think it was a sign of those times.

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Listen to the premium-tier playlist of my 100 recordings of the 1960s: